


My Mind Put to Motion

by FrazzledSquidz



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Gen, Ghosties, Klaus Hargreeves Needs A Hug, M/M, Pansexual Character, Past Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Sobriety, Substance Abuse, Suicidal Thoughts, Swearing, Underage Drug Use, War, gender fluidity, the gender binary is a farce
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2020-01-12 09:59:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18444230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrazzledSquidz/pseuds/FrazzledSquidz
Summary: It was an easy way to live, honestly. The hardest part about his life was finding money to get high. He didn’t care for anything, didn’t want anything, and if he died, well, that was a pleasant side-effect. (Not that he was actively suicidal because Ben would never let that shit go.)But then Dave happened.





	My Mind Put to Motion

**Author's Note:**

> _We move like the ocean,_   
>  _But I can’t swim_   
>  _Anymore._
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> (Lyrics and title taken from the song We Move Like the Ocean by Bad Suns.)
> 
> In a manner that surprised literally no one Klaus climbed into my brain and set up camp there quite happily. I fell in love with him at that first scene and just kept falling so I wrote two things I hated and then this, which I didn’t hate and I hope you don’t either.

There was Before Dave and After Dave- like nothing in his life had mattered up until he’d met that other man. 

Before Dave was about chasing highs, which was really a misnomer because he was sedating himself almost to the point of death. (And actually had crossed that line a couple of times, though _damn_ him if he could stay dead.) He was hyper enough without uppers, so his best friends were bars of Xanies. Little tablets of Percs, Ativan, Oxys, hell even codeine or Vicodin when he was desperate. Dilaudid or phenobarbital for when he was flush. Swallow them whole, crush them and snort them, find a transdermal patch that would last a day… Anything would work as long as it shut his brain up. 

It hadn’t started like that, of course. It wasn’t like one day he just picked up a discarded packet of pills and said, “Why not?” (That would be his life later.) It was more that he was a teenager and was halfway out of his mind with all the noise constantly surrounding him. Music had worked up to a point but he was miserable stuck in that house as the middlest of middle children with a power that didn’t help with Saving the World and a dad who couldn’t have been more displeased if he’d tried.

Of course he was desperate for attention, of course he would do anything to be noticed. Part of it was his personality but another part was trying to be heard over the cacophony that constantly surrounded him, both living and dead. If he could draw people’s eyes to be focused on him, even for a minute, then it meant that he wasn’t just another voice screaming mindlessly from the void. 

Having his jaw wired shut for eight weeks and being on a liquid diet had sucked ass, but it wound up being a good thing for him in the end. Not only did Klaus realize that his family dismissed him whether he was loud or he was quiet, but it also introduced him to oxycodone. 

It was easy to get an extra script as a kid. No one thinks that a 12 year-old is gunning for benzos, so a few whimpers and some tears had him covered for awhile. When that eventually got old Klaus went searching and easily found marijuana.

People who don’t do drugs tend to think that it’s all or nothing, but Klaus wasn’t trying to get totally faded: he just wanted the ghosts to stop screaming at him all the time. A nice steady high throughout the day made his teenage years so much more bearable. It felt like some of the weight had finally been taken off his shoulders, leaving him without a single fuck to give. 

For once life was manageable: his dad was a distant annoyance (having totally given up on him after the mausoleum stunt failed to draw out Klaus’ powers), he found he didn’t mind that his teenage siblings were all drifting off in their own directions, and he allowed himself to give up on the childish idea of Saving the World. 

Of course that wound up with him outing himself on live television, but I mean _really_ who didn’t know at that point? Klaus had examined the rules of the gender binary and found them wanting. He would dress however he wanted, sleep with whoever he wanted, and eventually, once Ben was gone, decided that he would do whatever he wanted as well. 

Klaus’ body eventually got too acclimated to the weed, which was when the pills came in. But then he was on his own and pills were expensive, so that predictably led to an intermittent heroin habit which, in turn, led to stints in and out of detoxes and rehabs and jails. When he wasn’t institutionalized it was easy to sleep with someone and crash at their place for a few weeks, taking advantage of the trade in drugs, food, clothes, and sex. 

He could still see a couple of ghosts from the corner of his eye but he couldn’t hear them, and that was the main thing. Ben was the exception, but whether that had more to do with Klaus or Ben he didn’t want to examine too closely. Yeah his brother was a buzz-kill pain in the ass, but he was also consistent company. Ben was someone who looked at him and actually saw him. (Ben may not have had any other options but _still_.)

It was an easy way to live, honestly. The hardest part about his life was finding money to get high. He didn’t care for anything, didn’t want anything, and if he died, well, that was a pleasant side-effect. (Not that he was actively suicidal because Ben would never let that shit go.) 

But then Dave happened. 

Dave was a different kind of high- the best kind. Dave was the kind that peacefully wrapped around Klaus’ brain, buffering him from the noise of the world, and then somehow never let him go. Even through the horrors of war, adjusting to 1960s societal beliefs, acclimating to fucking Vietnam, and remaining off benzos and opioids, Dave never let Klaus crash. 

So what was the point in going back? Back to a world that was ending, a family that forgot about him, an existence that couldn’t be handled sober? It was fun being high but it was also an exhausting life to lead. A life he didn’t want. Now that he wasn’t so haunted he didn’t need to be constantly halfway out of his brain anymore.

There was a brotherly camaraderie to be found in his troop, a kind of bond that could only exist between men who could die at any point in time. It was closer than he’d ever felt to anyone else, especially his family. And so Klaus stashed the briefcase with their supplies and bribed a guy to keep an eye out but to never ever open it. He made his own family, either in spite of or because of the war. They partied together, got tattoos together, lived together, slept together, and mourned together. There were bad jokes and soul-baring moments and laughs and fights and so much affection it made Klaus’ teeth hurt. 

It honestly took some time to bat away the habit of searching; for a person to appear only to him, for little bags of black or crumbly pills, for the next person or situation he could take advantage of. And he had to get used to being alert, unable to drift through his days within a war-torn foreign country. (Shooting things helped. Guns were _exciting_.) Of course, every time Dave smiled at him Klaus felt like he’d gotten an EpiPen to the heart. No was ever as awake as Klaus when Dave’s eyes were focused on him. 

Klaus couldn’t say how many times he’d had to face down monsters and bad guys and ghosts and the worst kinds of people. (It fucking figured that the one thing in his life he was truly scared of was also the one thing that surrounded him constantly, throwing his brain into the incredible stress of never-ending fight-or-flight.) But there had never been anything in his life more terrifying- or thrilling- than the moment right before he kissed Dave. When it was just a whisper in the back of his mind, a delicious possibility, a potential and wonderful free-fall. 

Except that then Dave died. Was killed. And during Klaus’ mind-tearing grief and horror everyone else around him started falling as well. The people who had become his friends and brothers, his family, was dying. They were losing their battle. 

Klaus wanted nothing more than to curl up in the blood and the mud and die as well, but some fucking stupid animal instinct kicked in and before he knew it he was back in 2019. 

It was easy to fall back into old habits. Except that it wasn’t, not at all. 

The bath didn’t help, the pills and liquor didn’t help, even picking a fight with a bunch of vets didn’t help. His grief was insurmountable, all-consuming. He could recognize that he had never loved or lost anyone before, and now he’d done both. Yippee. 

It was embarrassing to admit, but Klaus hadn’t honestly thought about the fact that he might be able to see Dave again until Diego brought it up. He’d spent his entire life avoiding the dead and living the last year blissfully ghost-free but… What if Diego was right? What if he could sober up enough to see Dave? Even if he’d have to encounter all the other screaming horrors, it would be worth it. 

And so he flushed his pills. It was both the hardest and the easiest thing he’d ever done. He could never have done it for himself, but for Dave… it was possible. 

Possible. Withdrawing, on the other hand, was definitely one of the worst things. And yeah, he’d done it before- quite a few times, actually. But he was usually at a facility, some detox or rehab that would give him meds so he wouldn’t suffer so much. This time he was on his own and he had a deadline: the world was ending in three days. 

But it was hard to hold onto all that with the sweat spiking from every pore in his body and his brain clawing its way out of this skull and his stomach folding itself into origami. They say that every time you kick it gets harder, and Klaus had kicked plenty. The only time he’d been able to do it cold-turkey was when he’d been tied up, so he brought some rope to Luther and encountered… a whole different set of issues. 

_You always seem so carefree._

Was Luther fucking blind? Or had Klaus been a better actor than he’d thought all those years? Regardless Luther was at the bottom of a bottle, a place Klaus knew like the tattoos on the palms of his hands. He also knew it was no place to be alone, especially the first time. And extra-especially after truly realizing was a prick Daddy Dearest had been for their entire lives. 

If he thought kicking was bad, that was before he ran all over town trying to find his wayward brother who was hell-bent on self-destruction. And it was definitely before getting thrown into the lion’s den of all his temptations. 

It was even worse that he felt like he was inside out: colors were too bright and noise was too loud and even the air on his skin felt like fire. He held that beautiful tiny pill of X and was strong enough to throw it away but not strong enough not to crawl after it. Even though it was an upper it would help; anything to numb these feelings. He finally understood that stereotype of vets hating loud sounds: why did the music just sound like gunfire in his ears? 

When he finally got to the X he found Dave instead. Beautiful Dave with a hole in his chest and blood coming from his mouth. Had Klaus conjured or hallucinated him? God the one good thing in his entire shitty life and there was nothing he could do to hold onto it. 

Death was an acceptable outcome. (Except when it put in in front of his fucking dad what the hell the universe did hate him.) 

Living was… not an acceptable outcome, but it was what he’d been stuck with. So there was nothing to do but soldier on, as it were. 

One day at a time.

**Author's Note:**

> Trying to dig into the psychology of fictional characters is a bad habit of mine, but listen. While he's being torture and he’s starting to communicate with the ghosts as he says, “You guys are worse than the drugs.” 
> 
> That line HAUNTS me.


End file.
